Wake School Board Majority Should Be Ashamed

While most of us have been enjoying holiday merriment over the past couple of weeks, there has been a significant development regarding the education of children in Wake County, NC.  On Thursday, December 23, the Wake County School Board announced that they had hired retired Army Brigadier General Anthony J. Tata to be the new Superintendent of the Wake County Schools.  Tata comes to run the Wake County school system, which is the 18th largest school system in the nation, after 10 months of training in school system management at the Broad Superintendents Academy and 19 month overseeing purchasing, food services, technology, and other support services for the District of Columbia Public Schools (which is the 71st largest school system, with less than half as many students and two thirds of the budget of the Wake County system).

So while there are reasons to be concerned with Tata's ability to serve in this position, I'm trying to keep an open mind about him until we get to hear from him directly and see him in action.  And certainly I want him to succeed in improving the education for the nearly 150,000 student for whom he will be responsible.  But one thing that I am clear about is how poorly the majority coalition on the Board has handled his hiring.  Their arrogant and exclusionary behavior in selecting Tata has not done the guy any favors in being able to serve the entire Wake County community.

The first misstep by the School Board majority was the timing of the hiring process.  They announced his selection TWO days before Christmas.  Coming from DC, I know this is the oldest trick in the book. Politicians ALWAYS wait until the week before Christmas to announce something significant--as long as it is BAD news.  Divorcing the faithful spouse, admitting to an extramarital affair or an illegitimate child, announcing a stint in rehab--that's the kind of news that public officials release right before Christmas in the hopes it will get lost amidst the distractions of the holiday.

In this case, they made it even more of a slap-in-the-face to the teachers in the Wake County schools by waiting until the day after their last workday in 2010 to announce his hiring.  Also, they rushed this decision through on an emergency meeting of the Board that gave the members--or, at least, the minority members-only 48 hours notice (and one them was already out of town for work).  They refused to delay final action until their regularly-scheduled meeting on the first week of January in order to allow some public comment on this decision.

And what was their rationale for this rush to hire?  Board Chair Margiotti claimed that they had to move right away to assure they could get the man he said was the strongest among the three finalists.  Well, to that I say, POPPYCOCK (insert your own expression of indignation here).  I've still been reading the national education news over the holidays, and I didn't hear about any other similar job that might have attracted Tata that was awarded before January 4th, the date of the next Board meeting.  In fact, when DC Superintendent Michelle Rhee left the system (after she had publicly campaigned for the Mayor who hired her, who then lost, and the new Mayor decided he didn't need a school superintendent who had been attacking him among his constituency), she assured the public that the rest of her team would be staying in place until the end of the school year to assure continuity for the DC schools.  (Tata says that he agreed to stay, unless he got the Wake County job...so, basically, agreed to stay unless he got another job, in which case he was going to abandon ship as well.)  The bottom line is, there is no sign that Tata would be snatched away by some other school system had the Board waited for an additional 12 days.

So to my mind, in handling the decision in this manner, the majority of the School Board admitted the following:

1. That they expect Tata to be considered "bad news" by much of the community;
2. That since they had the votes they needed, they didn't care whether the minority members on the Board were there or not;
3. That they didn't care about the teachers' reaction to their new school leader; and
4. That they don't care about the public's reaction, or think that public concerns need to be addressed or even considered.

Oh, and maybe that they think that we are a bunch of fools who will buy a ridiculous explanation like that and that even if we were distracted over the holidays, we're not going to raise our concerns now.

So I really feel sorry for Anthony Tata.   Being a School Superintendent of such a large and diverse public school system is a really tough job at the best of times, and this is far from the best of times.  The Wake County public is more divided than ever, the fiscal situation means that he is going to have to cut budgets and order layoffs, and the system is under investigation by both a federal civil rights unit AND by the regional accreditation agency.  He didn't need to be thrust into the job in a way that was sure to antagonize, and perhaps even galvanize, those who don't see eye-to-eye with the Board majority.

So good luck to you, General Tata.  You're going to need it.  And shame on all those Board members who acted in such a way as to make your nearly-impossible job even harder.